"Considered themselves...her patrons and superiors" (p. 86) in volume 1 of The House of the Seven Gables illustrated by Edith and Mildred Cowles (Houghton Mifflin, 1899)

According to John L. Idol, Jr., "...the Cowles sisters present characters that seem to breathe, have blood in their veins, thoughts in their minds, and feelings in their hearts. ... I'm suggesting that the Cowles sisters understood an illustrator's role, which is being a collaborative artist capable of helping a reader visualize the words of an author. In an age where the visual receives far more attention than the verbal, the Cowles sisters' illustrations of The House of the Seven Gables should be far better known than they are." (See http://www.hawthorneinsalem.org/page/10174 for a fuller discussion of this topic by Professor Idol.)